If Bill Gates is such a great philanthropist . . .

[Nancy Allison]

Hi, Jonathan  and everyone. Jonathan, you say, (about using Word for 
complex tech docs),

>If you make careful decisions about what features you use, decide to use
>them consistently, and define your templates properly, there is no reason
>why you cannot build stable large documents in Word. In other words, to be
>successful, you voluntarily decide to plan your document design as carefully
>as you would have to if you were using Frame.
>
>At one time I was responsible for editing a Word document that ran to about
>3500 pages of structured text with many tables, and it was perfectly stable.
>  
>

Over the years, I've encountered very credible people who've said much 
the same thing, so I assume it must be true! Let's assume that if you 
spend 4 hours setting up a document with Frame, and 4 hours setting it 
up with Word, that you've covered the same ground by the end of that 
time period. Say, a chapter files, a book file, TOC, Index, headers, 
footers, paragraph tags, and character tags (or the Word equivalents).

In Framemaker, by setting up those things, you're using the tool 
directly as it's intended to be used. Someone coming along after you can 
pretty well figure out what you've done -- let's assume that this 
"someone" is a tech writer with, say 15 years' experience and extensive 
knowledge of the workings of complex technical documents.

In Word . . . are you using it directly as intended, or do you have to 
create workarounds or bring in outside utilities to achieve a good 
result? I'm thinking of the autonumbering problem (and the attendant 
magically appearing tabs and indents), the broken Master Document 
feature (and the need to cobble together Indexes and TOCs through other 
means), and undoubtedly other things as well. Can someone coming after 
you open Word and, by following menu items and the online help, figure 
out what you've done?

If both Frame and Word can produce a basic document design in the same 
amount of time, but if one is basically plain-vanilla use of the DTP 
software and the other isn't, obviously there's still a difference of 
costs and efficiency in the later life of the document, when other 
people have to figure out how to maintain it.

I know this may be a huge question, but I'm hoping I've set it out 
clearly enough to be worth discussing. Jonathan, what say you?

--Nancy